Prologue to the story: My Fogarty Center training grant for
Uruguay and Argentina was designed to see the resources used to train graduate
students to increase the talent pool for the local university faculties. They also wanted to see a regional
impact on public health of the enhanced programs. Thus, as Director I spent a lot of my time trying to build
collaborations across national borders among countries that historically did
not tend to help one anther or co-operate easily on a regional scale. That led to a lot of failed initiatives
along with a few spectacular successes.
Once
upon a time, in a land long ago and far away, my colleagues from Uruguay were
with me at a scientific meeting in Santiago, Chile. We arranged to meet separately with a local academician with
ties to the salmon fish farming industry in the south of Chile who had a
problem that I hoped the Uruguayan colleagues might be able to help solve for
him. The problem was to be able to
analyze the fish at an exquisite level of sensitivity to be able to certify
that they were free of any residues of antibiotics, so as to allow their export
to Japan and the European Union countries. My Uruguayan colleagues had the necessary methodology, while
the Chileans had a need. Hence,
the small meeting within the larger meeting made sense.
